Showing posts with label Gulf of Mexico. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gulf of Mexico. Show all posts
13.12.10
BurP: Now What?
Leonard Horowitz and Sherry Kane Step In Some Truth
In case you're not up to date on the latest conspiracy slang, LIHOP means Let It Happen On Purpose, and MIHOP means Made It Happen On Purpose.
To review: the evil BP was drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) in about 10,000 feet of water in a block named Macando. They were leasing one of the most advanced deepwater rigs in the world from TransOean, and there were a number of sub-contractors on the rig to handle various aspects of operations, such as the Dynamic Positioning system, the drilling, mudding, casing, and so on. Such operations are at the bleeding edge of technology. The pressures and tensions involved in working in 2 miles of water depth are astounding. The weight of the drill string required incredibly powerful machines to grip and hold the pipe. The water pressures require the use of remote operated vehicles (ROVs) to keep a visual on the well-head, as well as manipulate various geer, since divers cannot go that deep. Huge thrusters are used to keep the rig stationed over the well, since anchors are impractical in water that deep.
There are many other considerations, but you get the idea that the people who operate out there are not dummies. They are highly trained and skilled technicians who are fully aware that if they make a mistake, it is most likely catastrophic.
The top man on the rig is the Company Man. There are two of them working in 12-hour shifts, overseeing all operations and approving every step of the process. The top guy on the Deepwater Horizon was one of the best inthe business, and he was pulled off the rig a couple of days before the disaster, during a critical phase of casing the well, or pumping cement down the hole and up the outside of the steel tube inserted into the well, to keep the hole from collapsing.
The process was under the control of a VERY well-known and respected contractor. They are in charge of the mix for the concrete and calculating the number of spacers that are inserted, and the flow rate, and a number of other variables involved. These are carefully calculated and nothing is left to chance. The contractor specified using over 100 spacers for the casing, because of the pressures involved and the geology of the well. Amazingly, the BP company man who had replaced the #1, who was pulled off to get some useless training landside, overrode the contractor and reduced the number of spacers to around 20.
Now I don't know about you, but when I hire experts to do something, I tend to listen to them.
The contractor was so alarmed by this action that they pulled their people off the rig the morning of the explosion with an unscheduled helicopter pick-up. Hours later, the well blew out, the rig sank and the rest is history...or is it?
You see, the damage is not yet finished and the well itself may still be spewing. We don't really know. Here's why...
During the capping operations to try to stop the well from dumping millions of gallons of oil into the GOM, a hurricane blew in. Following policies long established, all top-side operations stopped when the storm reached a certain distance, and crews and vessels were pulled back to port when the storm reached another 'line in the sand.'
Until that point, an ROV had been parked on the sea floor streaming video of the well head to the world via the internet. If you hunt around, you'll find pre-storm video feeds. Look carefully. Notice all the data on the screen. Find the latitude and longitude numbers and punch them into your GPS. Now, find video after the storm, when BP announced they had miraculously capped the well. Now note the lat/lons and punch those into your GPS. What do you notice?
Hmmmmmmmm...
Looks to me like they are different wells. Looked that way to Matt Simmons, too. Now you may recall that Simmons is, oops I mean was, one of the foremost commentators on the oil patch and was followed religiously by investors in the sector. Now he noticed a slight problem with the lat/lons on-screen. He did a little homework and found that the new coordinates matched a previous well, known as "Macando A", that BP had capped previously because it had become unstable and threatened to blow out.
Now you may not have heard Simmon's warnings. They were squelched by the media just days before he was 'heart-attacked' and 'drowned.'
Maybe you haven't noticed that the Company Man who was responsible for the spacer decision has 'taken the fifth' at the Gulf Hearings, conducted by the Crimin...I mean the Feral Gummint.
Skip ahead a bit.
The GOM is responsible for a lot of weather in the norther hemisphere. Ocean currents come up from the south and swirl around in the GOM for a while, where they get nice and warm. They then proceed up the east coast of North America and slide across the Atlantic, where they slam into the west coast of Ireland. This process, known as the Gulf Stream, releases enough heat to moderate the climate in Europe, which is why it rarely snows in Ireland and England, and places like Holland, France and Germany enjoy less-than-deadly winters, despite being a hair's breadth from the Arctic Circle.
Now, let's play a thought game. Suppose you were to squelch the release of heat from the Gulf Stream, or even modify it, with, oh I don't know, let's say OIL. That tiny bit of warming, enough to raise temps a degree or two, vanishes and what happens? Massive snow storms. Record low temperatures. Hundreds if not thousands die from the cold. Records that are centuries old fall.
Oh, and let's not forget that the GOM also provides enough warming in North America that it keeps deadly winters from striking there, as well. So, it that heat is trapped by, oh I don't know, let's say OIL, then what happens? How about blizzards, record lows, hundreds of deaths. Even Cancun, which is an island off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula at the southern most boundary of the GOM might experience record low temps during, oh I don't know, the Global Warming Conference, let's say.
If that were the case, and I'm not saying it could happen, then that would make BP directly and indirectly responsible for thousands of deaths on two continents, as well as global weather modification, destruction of incredibly sensitive habitats, and so on.
And all that would happen because the top Company Man was pulled off a rig days before a major blow-out caused by his replacement who ordered a highly respected contractor to reduce the number of spacers they had carefully calculated and which they claimed to have capped even though a respected analyst had noticed that the lat/lons were wrong shortly before he died an untimely death.
It's a darned good thing this is all just hypothetical. Otherwise I'd be tempted to say that this was a MIHOP terrorist event on a scale that makes 9/11, 7/7 and Mumbai pale by comparason. And then I'd have to look over my shoulder all the time to make sure I didn't get 'heart-attacked.'
It could never happen, right?
Just in case you're wondering how some goombah living in Indonesia could know all this, well...in my past llfe I worked for 10 years in offshore construction as a marketing and business development specialist. I know a lot of people who know things about this mess.
Nuff said.
5.7.10
BurP- A Case of Gas
In the history of bad ideas, this one is probably the single worst idea ever.
To appreciate what's going on here, you need to understand the situation. First of all, the geology. There is a vast lake of oil in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) that has been tapped for decades by the myriad wells that are currently in place. However, those wells have only been hitting small pockets at relatively shallow levels. Think of a lava lamp with small blobs of oil rising up off the mother lode at the bottom. Until now, it has been impossible to tap the larger source because the technology to reach depths of 10,000 feet of water did not exist. There was no way to build a platform, for one thing, no way to get divers to the well-head, and the pressures are beyond imagination at those depths. The Deepwater Horizon was a unique and cutting-edge vessel that used powerful thrusters to maintain its position and robots (ROVs) to remotely service the well-head. All the equipment involved was at the bleeding edge of technology. So when BP cut costs on blow-out preventers and well-bore constuction, they slit their own throats.
Now, this vast lake of oil sits on top of a balloon of methane that was kept in check by the pressure of the oil and geology on top of it. The amount of methane is not precisely known, but it is under very high pressure and only the weight bearing down on it has kept it from spewing out. As a consequence, the oil is also under tremendous pressure and when BP tapped the mother lode, it essentially put a small crack in the dam. Because they did not take maximum precautions, the pressure blew out the well-bore and ultimately sank the vessel. In the process, the well casing was damaged, allowing high-pressure oil and gas to escape the well-bore and seep into the surrounding rock. By itself, that has caused damage to the surrounding geology, allowing the oil and gas to erode the rock and thus making the well uncontrollable. Any attempts to stop the flow have only caused more oil and gas to invade the surrounding rock and further erode it making a dangerous situation into an emergency of the highest order.
As the rock around the well-bore erodes, more and more pressure is released and the flow rate increases over time. Ultimately, enough pressure will be relieved that the methane will no longer be kept in check and will release explosively through the overlying strata in a cataclysm the likes of which have never been witnessed. The water will lose buoyancy causing all vessels to sink instantly. The resulting gas cloud would be highly toxic and kill pretty much everything it touches for hundreds of miles around. The oil that is released will poison most of the Earth's oceans for a minimum of several decades. The coastal areas will be uninhabitable and the GOM will be unusable for food or recreation.
Using a nuke to try and seal the well-head will most likely have the opposite effect. It will further erode the geology and cause multiple fractures to form, which in turn will allow more oil and gas to escape through a far wider area, thus hastening the inevitable explosive release. Given the worst-case scenario, the current situation, as bad as it is, if far more preferable until a fully reasoned and carefully crafted response can be assembled. There is a tremdous amount of pressure politically to "do something," but because neither BP nor the Feds are being forthright about the situation, most people do not understand what is going on. Cauterizing the well might seem like a really good idea, until you consider all of the consequences. It's a choice between the worst oil spill in history, or an extinction-level event.
It's a classic case of the devil you know versus the devil you don't.
To appreciate what's going on here, you need to understand the situation. First of all, the geology. There is a vast lake of oil in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) that has been tapped for decades by the myriad wells that are currently in place. However, those wells have only been hitting small pockets at relatively shallow levels. Think of a lava lamp with small blobs of oil rising up off the mother lode at the bottom. Until now, it has been impossible to tap the larger source because the technology to reach depths of 10,000 feet of water did not exist. There was no way to build a platform, for one thing, no way to get divers to the well-head, and the pressures are beyond imagination at those depths. The Deepwater Horizon was a unique and cutting-edge vessel that used powerful thrusters to maintain its position and robots (ROVs) to remotely service the well-head. All the equipment involved was at the bleeding edge of technology. So when BP cut costs on blow-out preventers and well-bore constuction, they slit their own throats.
Now, this vast lake of oil sits on top of a balloon of methane that was kept in check by the pressure of the oil and geology on top of it. The amount of methane is not precisely known, but it is under very high pressure and only the weight bearing down on it has kept it from spewing out. As a consequence, the oil is also under tremendous pressure and when BP tapped the mother lode, it essentially put a small crack in the dam. Because they did not take maximum precautions, the pressure blew out the well-bore and ultimately sank the vessel. In the process, the well casing was damaged, allowing high-pressure oil and gas to escape the well-bore and seep into the surrounding rock. By itself, that has caused damage to the surrounding geology, allowing the oil and gas to erode the rock and thus making the well uncontrollable. Any attempts to stop the flow have only caused more oil and gas to invade the surrounding rock and further erode it making a dangerous situation into an emergency of the highest order.
As the rock around the well-bore erodes, more and more pressure is released and the flow rate increases over time. Ultimately, enough pressure will be relieved that the methane will no longer be kept in check and will release explosively through the overlying strata in a cataclysm the likes of which have never been witnessed. The water will lose buoyancy causing all vessels to sink instantly. The resulting gas cloud would be highly toxic and kill pretty much everything it touches for hundreds of miles around. The oil that is released will poison most of the Earth's oceans for a minimum of several decades. The coastal areas will be uninhabitable and the GOM will be unusable for food or recreation.
Using a nuke to try and seal the well-head will most likely have the opposite effect. It will further erode the geology and cause multiple fractures to form, which in turn will allow more oil and gas to escape through a far wider area, thus hastening the inevitable explosive release. Given the worst-case scenario, the current situation, as bad as it is, if far more preferable until a fully reasoned and carefully crafted response can be assembled. There is a tremdous amount of pressure politically to "do something," but because neither BP nor the Feds are being forthright about the situation, most people do not understand what is going on. Cauterizing the well might seem like a really good idea, until you consider all of the consequences. It's a choice between the worst oil spill in history, or an extinction-level event.
It's a classic case of the devil you know versus the devil you don't.
16.6.10
Bammy-Bots Untie!
Bammy Revives Cap n Trade
Bammy Wants Clean Energy
Bammy Calls Oil Spill New 9/11
Bammy Drives Merica Into the Dirt
Merica finally has what it deserves, what its public schools have spent so long trying to create: The Articulate Idiot.
Yes, folks, it walks, it talks, it makes smooth sounds...but what is happening between the ears turns Eisteinian space-time on it head. It is so warped that not even a black hole can escape the profound singularity of stupidity. The gravitational pull of this level of idiocy is sucking the entire world down with it, and yet, there are still people who look to this perverse clown for hope and change.
Dubya was a mouth breathing, knuckle dragging cretin, but Bammy is a new class of stupid. Future generations, if we are lucky enough to have any after this joker is finished, will need a new word to describe this kind of suave meat-puppet.
Just glancing at the headlines linked above should be enough to make you throw up your hands and give up. There's nothing left to fight for, if this is the quality of leader Merica puts up. I mean, with an extinction level event happening in the backyard, Bammy wants to revive Cap-n-Trade, push for clean energy and compare the problem to 9/11. We should all be clapping our hands against our foreheads in sheer amazement that someone this vacuous even has involuntary biological functions.
So, without further ado, let's look at some of Bammy's "ideas":
Revive Cap-n-Trade Legislation
This onerous pile of claptrap, carried to its logical conclusion, would seek to limit procreation (we are carbon-based life forms), regulate respiration (we exhale carbon dioxide), create carbon poker chips, and give the banksters a new game of chance in the hopes of keeping the market/casino alive. Hell, Mars' atmosphere is more than 90% carbon dioxide, but I don't hear anyone arguing that planet is in imminent danger of overheating. Furthermore, the whole thing is premised on a now-defunct theory that was shown to be a scam by Climategate. Exactly how this will stop and remediate the worst environmental disaster in recorded history is not presented to us, but it does push some emotional hot buttons that the media have spent years installing and propagandizing. In other words, this is a classic misdirection gambit.
Push For Clean Energy
Great. Bammy wants to implements a policy, which might lead to legislation, which could create incentives to possibly push research, which could produce new clean energy sources, which might be adopted by the general public. Based on years worth of observation, I estimate this solution to take about 40-50 years to have an effect. Meanwhile, the oil is spewing into the ocean NOW. Next...
Oil Spill Is Like 9/11
So let me get this straight...Bammy is saying that BP are terrorists that have been aided and abetted by factions of the federal government to create this disaster in order to achieve certain long-term socio-economic goals? Or is he pushing emotional hot buttons again so that we won't look behind his curtain and see what an inept buffoon he is? I mean, come on...a hydrocarbon volcano 3,000 meters below the surface, belching tons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico daily is not the same as imploding a couple of Manhattan buildings and calling it terrorism. Not by a long shot. At best, this spill will cause mass re-locations and the condemnation of large swaths of coastal lands and sensitive habitats for decades to come. At worst, we will all be dead in about 10-20 years. And this compares in what way with the deliberate destruction of three buildings in Hew York City, that barely a decade later only affects the lives of the inhabitants and soldiers dying in illegal wars of aggression in far off lands. Nope, sorry Bammy, ain't buyin' it. Back to the drawing board. You do know what a drawing board is, right? Good little Bammy.
This nincompoop actually thinks we are stupid enough to buy this load of crap. On the other hand, the Merican people DID elect the swine. Perhaps when I finish my preparations for TEOTWAWKI, I'll take a minute to laugh and say, "I told you so." Bammy's enough to make me miss Nixon. At least Nixon was a genuine intellectual. Bammy was elected because he could read a prompter after several hours of practice and pronounce big words on cue. Not exactly the curriculum vitae of a deep thinker.
If Bammy was a leader, he would have galvanized the population into action, directed resources efficiently, applied overkill efforts, and all within the first week. We're now rounding the second month, he just met with the chairman of BP, plays golf daily, and pushes hot buttons and propagandizes in lieu of constructive mobilization. Either he is so dense that he doesn't know a planet-killing disaster when he sees one, or he is purposefully bungling the mop-up at the behest of the real leadership of Merica. Neither option is particularly palatable.
Meanwhile, an enormous cloud of oil is rounding Florida and will soon foul the Atlantic and then Europe. In a few years, it will cover West Africa and head for India. With this level of disaster, why are we wasting time and effort on Cap-n-Trade and comparisons to past criminal acts? The time for worrying about clean energy sources was decades ago. But, let's not gum up the discussion with simple facts, shall we? Keep the rubes distracted and they won't notice the planet dying. Nothing like sounds policy and action, I always say.
My colleague, George Ure, over at UrbanSurvival, makes an excellent point. Once the coastal areas are fouled and uninhabitable, all those people will go somewhere else, and when they do, they will stop paying the mortgages on those properties. Let's add that up, shall we? Mass displacement of people+gross devaluation of formerly recreational properties+large scale collapse of economic sectors=Oops!
So, immediate destruction of some great recreational real estate, followed by the irreversible loss of wildlife habitats, followed by a global underwater death cloud, followed by collapse of the food chain, followed by mass extinction.
Check, check, check. Yup, pass the Cap-n-Trade and catch ya at the 19th hole, Bammy. The man's like Swiss cheese, no matter how you slice him, he's still full of holes.
So long and thanks for all the fish.
Bammy Wants Clean Energy
Bammy Calls Oil Spill New 9/11
Bammy Drives Merica Into the Dirt
Merica finally has what it deserves, what its public schools have spent so long trying to create: The Articulate Idiot.
Yes, folks, it walks, it talks, it makes smooth sounds...but what is happening between the ears turns Eisteinian space-time on it head. It is so warped that not even a black hole can escape the profound singularity of stupidity. The gravitational pull of this level of idiocy is sucking the entire world down with it, and yet, there are still people who look to this perverse clown for hope and change.
Dubya was a mouth breathing, knuckle dragging cretin, but Bammy is a new class of stupid. Future generations, if we are lucky enough to have any after this joker is finished, will need a new word to describe this kind of suave meat-puppet.
Just glancing at the headlines linked above should be enough to make you throw up your hands and give up. There's nothing left to fight for, if this is the quality of leader Merica puts up. I mean, with an extinction level event happening in the backyard, Bammy wants to revive Cap-n-Trade, push for clean energy and compare the problem to 9/11. We should all be clapping our hands against our foreheads in sheer amazement that someone this vacuous even has involuntary biological functions.
So, without further ado, let's look at some of Bammy's "ideas":
Revive Cap-n-Trade Legislation
This onerous pile of claptrap, carried to its logical conclusion, would seek to limit procreation (we are carbon-based life forms), regulate respiration (we exhale carbon dioxide), create carbon poker chips, and give the banksters a new game of chance in the hopes of keeping the market/casino alive. Hell, Mars' atmosphere is more than 90% carbon dioxide, but I don't hear anyone arguing that planet is in imminent danger of overheating. Furthermore, the whole thing is premised on a now-defunct theory that was shown to be a scam by Climategate. Exactly how this will stop and remediate the worst environmental disaster in recorded history is not presented to us, but it does push some emotional hot buttons that the media have spent years installing and propagandizing. In other words, this is a classic misdirection gambit.
Push For Clean Energy
Great. Bammy wants to implements a policy, which might lead to legislation, which could create incentives to possibly push research, which could produce new clean energy sources, which might be adopted by the general public. Based on years worth of observation, I estimate this solution to take about 40-50 years to have an effect. Meanwhile, the oil is spewing into the ocean NOW. Next...
Oil Spill Is Like 9/11
So let me get this straight...Bammy is saying that BP are terrorists that have been aided and abetted by factions of the federal government to create this disaster in order to achieve certain long-term socio-economic goals? Or is he pushing emotional hot buttons again so that we won't look behind his curtain and see what an inept buffoon he is? I mean, come on...a hydrocarbon volcano 3,000 meters below the surface, belching tons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico daily is not the same as imploding a couple of Manhattan buildings and calling it terrorism. Not by a long shot. At best, this spill will cause mass re-locations and the condemnation of large swaths of coastal lands and sensitive habitats for decades to come. At worst, we will all be dead in about 10-20 years. And this compares in what way with the deliberate destruction of three buildings in Hew York City, that barely a decade later only affects the lives of the inhabitants and soldiers dying in illegal wars of aggression in far off lands. Nope, sorry Bammy, ain't buyin' it. Back to the drawing board. You do know what a drawing board is, right? Good little Bammy.
This nincompoop actually thinks we are stupid enough to buy this load of crap. On the other hand, the Merican people DID elect the swine. Perhaps when I finish my preparations for TEOTWAWKI, I'll take a minute to laugh and say, "I told you so." Bammy's enough to make me miss Nixon. At least Nixon was a genuine intellectual. Bammy was elected because he could read a prompter after several hours of practice and pronounce big words on cue. Not exactly the curriculum vitae of a deep thinker.
If Bammy was a leader, he would have galvanized the population into action, directed resources efficiently, applied overkill efforts, and all within the first week. We're now rounding the second month, he just met with the chairman of BP, plays golf daily, and pushes hot buttons and propagandizes in lieu of constructive mobilization. Either he is so dense that he doesn't know a planet-killing disaster when he sees one, or he is purposefully bungling the mop-up at the behest of the real leadership of Merica. Neither option is particularly palatable.
Meanwhile, an enormous cloud of oil is rounding Florida and will soon foul the Atlantic and then Europe. In a few years, it will cover West Africa and head for India. With this level of disaster, why are we wasting time and effort on Cap-n-Trade and comparisons to past criminal acts? The time for worrying about clean energy sources was decades ago. But, let's not gum up the discussion with simple facts, shall we? Keep the rubes distracted and they won't notice the planet dying. Nothing like sounds policy and action, I always say.
My colleague, George Ure, over at UrbanSurvival, makes an excellent point. Once the coastal areas are fouled and uninhabitable, all those people will go somewhere else, and when they do, they will stop paying the mortgages on those properties. Let's add that up, shall we? Mass displacement of people+gross devaluation of formerly recreational properties+large scale collapse of economic sectors=Oops!
So, immediate destruction of some great recreational real estate, followed by the irreversible loss of wildlife habitats, followed by a global underwater death cloud, followed by collapse of the food chain, followed by mass extinction.
Check, check, check. Yup, pass the Cap-n-Trade and catch ya at the 19th hole, Bammy. The man's like Swiss cheese, no matter how you slice him, he's still full of holes.
So long and thanks for all the fish.
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